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New takes on the fossil world

By Douglas Palmer

IT’S a bit ironic that so much dosh is being spent grubbing about for any sign of life on Mars when we still have only a vague inkling of the life that once existed on Earth. Only a few hundred thousand fossil species have been described for the more than 3.8 billion years that life has been around on our planet – less than 0.01 per cent of species that have existed.

Biologists have plenty to catch up on, and palaeontologists have only begun to scratch the surface. Edward Petuch’s Cenozoic Seas reviews 4000 so-called “index” species of …